This Is The End, My Only Friend
by GluttonousAnorexiaNervosa
Summary: An obsession among friends leads to the discovery of the most import artifact in Human history...but does anyone realise it?


**Author's note: Still don't own Doctor Who, *sigh* but I do now own a bag of Mallowcreme Pumpkins. Yum.... Anyway, the usual, please review. Anyone who reviews mine gets a complimentary review in return! I promise. Or you can have one of my pumpkins, if you would like. If I tried to eat them all by myself I would get sick. But whatev. On to the story!**

"Okay, so explain this to me again, Alice," she paused to stifle a yawn, "why am I awake and in a storage facility?" She looked at the rows of doors stretching out before her.

"Oh, this is great, Jillian," Xav spouted excited beside her. "I can't believe you have never been to one of these before."

"Yeah, we come every week," Alice mused. Jill groaned. Alice elbowed her, "Come on, it will be an adventure!"

"We're going on an adventure, Charlie!" Xav yelled in a shrill voice.

"Yeah, Chaaaar-lieeeee," they echoed back to each other.

Jill pressed her hands over her ears. "Please, no Unicorns before seven am!"

"Hey, it's about time you guys got here!" someone yelled, interrupting the Youtube-fest.

"Oh, thank goodness you are here, Mateo!" Alice called back. "Did you bring the goods?" He held up a flat with four coffee cups. "Oh, you are my hero!" she said happily and gave him a kiss on the cheek.

"Mateo, maybe you can explain it, why do we have to be here so early?" Jill asked.

"Because, you have to get here early to get the good stuff," Mateo answered as he shoved a cup into her hands.

"Yes, these unit auctions are a great place to get things." Alice spouted excited. "This one time, right, you remember Xav, when they opened up the unit and found all those mummified cats?"

"Of course I remember! They were like, real Egyptian mummified cats. The guy who bought them like, sold them to a museum. Ever since we've come every chance we have. It's addictive."

"It was at one of these that I found those dishes that you love, Jill," Mateo said.

She smacked him on the shoulder. "Are you kidding me?"

"You guys over there, are you joining us? We are just getting ready to start!" a middle aged man yelled. A small crowd was gathered in front of a garage -sized door. They joined standing, in the back and waited as he unlocked the door, throwing it open with a flourish.

"Welcome to our world," Mateo whispered in her ear. Inside boxes of things greeted them. Furniture, clothes, books… if it could, it was there.

After a few hours, a significantly smaller crowd stood in front of a door. "Jill, you haven't bought anything," Alice said.

"Yeah, what is wrong with you?" Mateo asked as he pushed his fake crown back up his forehead.

"Hey, I just haven't found anything that I couldn't live without. I will buy something before we leave, I promise."

"Sure, sure…" Xav prodded. "We still have a couple more of units to go."

"This one hasn't been opened in years," the manager said as he threw the door open, letting sunlight flood in. She gasped. Her friends gathered around the lone item inside.

"What is it, a phone booth?"

"A really fancy port-a-pottie?"

Jill glared at her friends. "Stop, just stop!" she ran a hand over peeling blue paint. "It's a Police Box, can't you read?" she rapped it with her knuckles. "My grandfather was a constable. You put criminals inside and lock them in until someone can come and take them to jail."

Xav wrinkled his nose. "Kind of macabre."

She threw him a dirty look. "Not for days, idiot. Hours at the most."

The owner came up to her. "Would you like to buy this?" he asked.

She thought for a second, tapping a finger against her lip. "Yes, I suppose I would… how about fifty dollars?"

"Sixty."

She pursed her lips. "Fifty-five? Look, we'll take it right now, we've got a truck."

He seemed to be satisfied. "Sold."

"What are you going to do with this?" Mateo asked, "You haven't got room for a fish tank, let alone this thing."

"I'll worry about it later; I just felt this needed to be bought." She shrugged. "But we can totally get this in the back of your truck, right?" she asked Mateo.

"Uhm…."

She kissed him on the cheek. "Great, thanks. Let's get going then."

"Here, take this box as well for five dollars?" the manager asked.

Alice thumbed through it. "It's just papers. One dollar."

"Okay, sure. Let's move on, there's nothing else here." The small crowd continued on, leaving the four companions with the large wooden box.

***

She stood in front of her new purchase. It had taken some muscle, but they had gotten it into her apartment. 'Thank goodness I live on the ground floor,' she thought. She tried the door once more, but it was as still as locked as it had been every other time she tried it. She glanced at the cardboard box on the floor. 'Maybe the key is in there,' she mused. She found her glasses and pulled out sheaths of paper. It was covered with a neat script that caught her eye. "He never told me his name, but I knew a childhood friend of his called him Thete…"

Soon enough she had forgotten the search for the ke.

"Knock, knock," Mateo called from the door.

"Come in," she yelled back, distracted.

"Enjoying your box?" he asked and sat down beside her. "What is all this?"

She looked up at him. "It is really interesting. It's about this guy who owned this Tardis."

"Tardis?"

"Well, that is what this particular box is called. Hold, on I have it here somewhere," she rustled some pages. " 'Time and Relative Dimension in Space' is what he says it means. Apparently that is a ship that travels time. It also, interestingly enough, is bigger on the inside."

"Come on now. You don't expect me to believe that. That is impossible."

She showed him the sheaf of paper. "Right there, he says the inside is in another dimension. He even included sketches of the outside and some of the inside. It looks magnificent."

"So who is this guy, then?" Mateo asked, examining the pictures.

Well, he called himself the Doctor, but that wasn't his real name."

"Worried about identity theft?"

She rolled her eyes. "Well, based on what his various companions have written here, they all collaborate; he never told any of them his name. But that isn't the most interesting thing about him."

"You mean traveling in a refrigerator box with the inside dimensions of a cathedral isn't interesting enough?"

"No, that isn't the half of it. He claims he is from another planet."

"An alien." He said flatly.

"Yeah. 'The last of the Timelords,' I guess. And he could at the end of his life, come back as a new reincarnation. His arch-nemesis was this guy called The Master, and he fought these things called Daleks and Cybermen," she paused and flipped through pages. "It is really interesting; I have never read anything like it."

He stared at her. "An alien," he repeated in the same flat tone.

"Yeah, but that isn't important." She grabbed her laptop that was sitting beside her. "Because this is where it starts to get really weird." She pulled out a sheet of paper and started reading it aloud. "In the 20th century, on the planet earth, my companion Dorothy (or Dorothee) Gale McShane was born, on the 20th of August, 1970. She was a lovely, if somewhat explosive (forgive the bad pun, I grow somewhat tottery in my old age) young girl. I was blessed to have such a devoted companion."

"So what is so important about her, then?" he asked.

"Well, see, I looked her up, and she actually existed. I found her!"

He read the screen. "Well, what do you know, there she is. But there is no death certificate?"

"No, she just disappears." She flicked the sheet of paper, "As he says right here."

"So what, he got lucky is all."

"But it's not just that. I have looked up everyone who he mentions that comes from earth and comes before our time, and they all have documentation, they all existed. This woman even has a death certificate." She pointed at a pretty blond woman.

"What, she just died two years ago! That unit hadn't been opened in ten years, the manager said so himself."

"I know, and that is weird too. I called and asked him. He said it belonged to some guy who came in once, paid a decade in advance, and left. He doesn't remember anything about the guy, but the name on the release is John Smith."

"Well, that's a pseudonym if I have ever heard one."

"I know, right? This whole thing is just so weird."

"Maybe he liked to do meticulous research and connect random people together."

"Yeah, he could have, but who would bother to connect random events in history as well?"

He raised an eyebrow questioningly. "Explain."

"Here, this one, "Sarah, Harry and I were then summoned by the Brigadier to help contain a situation that had arisen. The Zygons were responsible for some mischief in Scotland. They were handled, but not before their monster was spotted in London. UNIT had a lot of work cleaning up that mess."

He shook his head. "So?"

"Well, according to him, this was the late seventies. And guess what I found?" she turned the screen where he could see it. 'Loch Ness Monster spotted in Thames, thousands panic in streets,' a bold headline read. "And there are more! Remember when the cars started emitting that smoke and we thought we were all going to die? Well, he claims that he is the one who stopped it. Most everything that has happened in the last few years, he claims to be responsible for it happening or for it to stop. He even talks about this year that we don't even remember."

"Now you sound like you believe him." He prodded her in the ribs.

She knitted her eyebrows together. "I think, I don't know… maybe I do. It is pretty incredible, but still… I remember those metal monsters too well…" she shivered, lost in her memories. He wrapped his arms around her, allowing her to rest her head on his shoulder.

"So what caused him to write it all down? Did he expect someone to read it? And where is he now? I can't imagine he is glad you have his Box."

"I think he was alone most of the time. He says at one point he is well over a millennia old. And although there are a lot of companions mentioned here, there is not that many."

He pulled out a sheet of paper and read it silently. "This reads like an encyclopedia entry or a newspaper article." He turned it over. "Signed by a Sarah Jane Smith, it is."

"Oh yeah, he has mentioned her a few times. I think she fancied him. The conversations they had implied as much. But he sounds like he totally missed it." She shook her head sadly.

"But there is one thing I don't understand," he said as he sifted the papers into a neat pile in his hands. "If he was so old and could… regenerate or whatever it is he does, then where is he now? Why did he lock up his ship in some storage facility in the southern US and leave it?"

"Well, apparently Timelords aren't allowed endless regenerations. I guess you were allowed 12 altogether. Here it says he was an old man, in his thirteenth body," she looked at him over her glasses. "He was dying, Mateo."

They sat in silence. "I wonder what he was like," he said after a moment.

She leaned her head against his shoulder. "I don't know. But he sounds amazing." she gazed at the darkened windows of the Tardis. "He says somewhere that it was alive, you know. I guess it must be dead too."

He wrapped his arms around her. They sat in silence.

***

Several months later, on a bright spring afternoon, they walked down the street, hand in hand. "Mateo, we should order a cake for Xav's birthday," Jill said, pausing in front of a bakery.

"Mmmhmm, we should." he responded.

"How old will he be, 25? 26? I think it will be his 26th, I seem to remember celebrating a quarter of a century last year. In fact, yes, we did," she noticed he was paying no attention. "Mateo?"

"Jill, look."

"What?" she followed his gaze, then froze.

A man stood in front of a Police Call Box, unlocking the door.

"Hey, stop!" they yelled and ran to the Tardis. He stepped into the door. "Doctor!" they screamed. They reached it and pounded on the doors. "Doctor, please! We want to talk to you!"

An unearthly howling filled the air as a wind picked up. They stepped back, and watched as it slowly disappeared from view.

"Well, that was surreal," Mateo said after a stunned silence.


End file.
